twitter and social media – why tweet? a 5 min presentation for skeptical scientists

Twitter and social media – why tweet?

Sophien Kamounhttp://KamounLab.net

@KamounLab

Building an internet presence

Broadcasting your research and activities

Access to news and information

Networking with peers

Consuming, connecting, creating, and curating (Osterrieder Plant Methods 2013, 9:26)

Why use social media as a scientist?

Open platform

Easy to access through mobile devices

Brevity (less than 140 characters)

Links to longer photos, videos, documents etc.

Powerful messaging tool

Consuming, connecting, and creating

Twitter is the most popular platform in science

Twitter username/handle, e.g. @KamounLab

Tweeps: people who follow you

RT: ReTweet

MT: Modified Tweet

Hashtag, e.g. #MPMI2014

Twitter jargon

See Twitter Glossary: http://support.twitter.com/articles/166337-the-twitter-glossary

Broadcast about my lab and research

Broadcast about stuff I come across that I find

interesting (science or anything else)

Reporting news and tidbits

“Pearls of wisdom”

#iamascientist

What do I tweet about?

Curation: Scoopit and Storify

Tweets are transient and become tricky to retrieve

Storify is a platform that enables archiving a

collection of tweets (and anything else)

Ideal for conferences and discussions on specific

topics

Curation: Scoopit

Another platform for curating internet information

Curation is the future of the internet because of

the huge content creation, e.g. Best of Youtube

The curator is an expert and thus is presumably

superior to automated curation platforms